


Battle Without Honor or Humanity

by Everlind



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Archived From Everlind Blog, Archived From Tumblr, Death, Gore, M/M, Trolls on Earth, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-12 22:51:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16880739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everlind/pseuds/Everlind
Summary: About a decade ago, trolls fled from Alternia to Earth.For years they have managed to co-existed in a tenuous harmony. Until a few months ago, when it all went to literal hell.It wasn't the mismatch of cultures that brought the world to its knees.It were the Daywalkers.





	Battle Without Honor or Humanity

By the time you’re completely surrounded you realise you’re in trouble and by then it’s already too late. Trouble with a capital T of the kind that will get you killed.

Turns out a hammer isn’t the best weapon to fight zombies with. Especially not in close quarters, when the bad guys don’t care if you break their faces or not. They just get up even after you break their face (and their arms) (and their legs) (and their ribs).

You’re… probably going to die.

Or worse.

If they mob you, no,  _when_  they mob you -they will, you’re completely surrounded- you’ll go down, and that’s it. If you’re lucky there’s enough of them they’ll just eat you, shred you up in tiny little John pieces until there’s nothing left after. You’ll probably be alive for most of that, which okay, totally sucks. Not looking forward to that. But at least you won’t get back up after.

That’s all that matters. It’s the only thing that matters.

The first zombie you ever killed was with a hammer -not this one, a smaller one, but it had reduced a skull to welter of bone fragments and decaying brain matter. CRUNCH and hey presto, one dead zombie. Pretty nice. Did the job.

It’s NOT doing the job now. There’s just too many. You can’t even use it for an easy ticket to the afterlife, like swallowing the barrel of the gun and pulling the trigger. You could try to hit yourself, but at this angle? No. At most you’ll just concuss yourself, put a nice dent in your head, fracture some stuff while you’re at it, but you’re not sure you can hit yourself hard enough it’ll instantly kill you. At best you’ll have succeeded in dazing yourself, making it all nice and easy for ‘em, a spasming hors d’oeuvre on a silver platter.

Suddenly you’re afraid.

Very real afraid, because you’re going to be in very real pain soon, and a lot of it, before you die.

You don’t want to die. You’re only seventeen and you’re all alone and you don’t want to die.

You scream, pure furious terror chafing at your throat as you haul your hammer around in a half-circle double handed. There’s a brief impression of chunks flying, of flesh tearing, a nose wrenching sideways under the assault, and then there’s hands pulling at your shirt. It’s the kind of strength that comes from beyond physical limits, inexorable and indifferent.

Death. Everything smells like death and decay, of musty bone. Something snarls against your cheek. The teeth have mutated into bulbous orange stumps, filling the mouth cavity to such capacity it can’t even bite. You strike out in horror, crack your knuckles painfully against its cheek, like punching a rubber bag full of stone.

And then you get pulled under.

Your head hits the street, driving your teeth through your lip. It’s so sudden, so surprising, you’re just stupidly groping around to try and get up again, uncoordinated flailing like a turtle on its back. You’re supine on the asphalt, disoriented, with glimpses of the blue sky above through the hungry writhe of bodies. The glasses of your goggles distort the colors, golden sepias like one of Dave’s retro photographs or late summer afternoons on the tire swing in your back yard. Pretty. You blink at it.

If they’re eating, if there’s pain, you don’t feel it.

You don’t look down to see. You don’t want to see them plucking at you with their stunted hands, stuffing their mouths with your flesh and skin, gnawing at bones and tendons. The sky is better.

One of them is standing over your midriff, feet planted. Claiming you its kill, perhaps. Strange. Usually they don’t even posses enough animal instinct to be territorial or quibble over food. They just. Eat.

You don’t want to die like this.

You throw up, just a splatter of wet fluid half-caught by the bandana wound around your face. It smears back across your mouth and dribbles down your neck as you roll onto hands and knees, back exposed to the hungry mob -not a smart move. You should crawl away, but your world is tilting wildly around your ears. It’s all you can do to not vomit again.

Where’s your hammer?

Again, hands in your shirt. You’re all but swung to your feet, the neckline of your shirt tearing, and then something is roaring in your face.

“ARE YOU JUST GOING TO  _LIE_  THERE?”

You’ve never heard them talk before. Dead is usually pretty damn dead. Well, besides the walking and eating part. But this one sure does! Feisty feller, too, geez, loud enough to make your ears ring, loud enough to make your brain hurt so bad bile floods your mouth.

It lightly taps your cheek, peers into your eyes.

No, wait, that doesn’t make any sense. You blink. Reality reasserts itself.

It’s a troll.

An actual live troll.

At any other time you’d love to just, well, gape and stare at the, uh, guy (you think?) but you’re kind of surrounded by zombies eager to feast on your flesh. Not a great time. A weapon is put, okay, forcibly shoved into your hands. It’s barely a second he faces you, just enough to sear the ghost of red eyes glowing within the dark recess of a hoodie across your mind’s eye.

“Fight or die, meatsack,” the troll grits out and then you’re both swinging to stand back-to-back as the zombies close in again.

There’s a circular swathe of them on the ground, occasionally twitching, most definitely bleeding (or oozing) and more clambering right over them—excuse us, coming through. You get ready to give them a hearty welcome. One shambles towards you, its arms an odd wreck of white-orange cartilage and frayed skin, fingers stripped to boney points crusted with organic matter and the odd speared-through coke can.

You’re already swinging when you remember this is most definitely not your hammer, but you’re committed to the momentum now. There’s hardly any noise upon impact, but one of the reaching limbs twirls away to the side, severed. You hew at the other one, slicing off several stick-like fingers, finish off with a stab to the head, burying the weapon between the milky eyes.

Oh, neat! It’s a sickle.

About the same range as your hammer, only a lot lighter, whoops, you’re so used to the sheer muscle necessary for your swings you overdo it, nearly pirouetting around and mowing your new buddy through the ribs on accident.

Your carelessness earns you a snarl. Hey, you’d totally apologise if you’re both weren’t busy trying not to die and stuff. Bummer about that.

After that you loose track of everything, except for two constants: the troll at your back and the sickle in your hand. You do a lot of chopping and dicing, they’re coming from all directions, too fast, too many, no way to run. At this rate you’ll bury yourselves in corpses and just be smothered to dead.

At your back troll friends yowls, disappears with a sharp tug. There’s time to turn, at least a whole handful of seconds before the next zombie will be upon you, it’s more than enough to whirl around and see a zombie bend over the prone form of your rescuer. Rude!

You slice the top of its head off.

It goes flying like a wobbly frisbee. You’ve aimed poorly, leaving less than half a head, just a stunted jaw and a lolling, licking tongue. It keels over almost slow-mo, goes splat on the troll’s chest. Frothy drool leaks onto his black sweater. The troll shrieks, bats at it with both hands, one of them still holding the sickle. Nearly stabs himself, way to go.

No time to see if he actually did poke himself some brand new holes, one of the zombies is nearly huffing down your neck, so close you don’t even have space for a proper swing. You just push the curved arc of the blade into its throat. There’s a gurgle and black, clotted blood spills over your fingers. Eugh. Oh great, the blade is wedged into the spine and it’s snapping at you, grinding its vertebra against your sickle to try and nibble at your fingers. Its gnarled teeth go: NOM-NOM-NOM. Eek.

The troll helps you out by stabbing it through the temple.

“Okay, that was disturbing,” you mutter, planting a feet against its chest to lever it off the blade. Something soft bursts under the sole of your sneaker, oh god oh god oh god that was a rotten boob, grooooooooss.

There’s a lull, an actual moment in which you can breathe, can look, can appreciate how much you hurt. There’s more pouring towards you from the intersection, three streets feeding the whole lot of them towards you and you have been making enough noise to wake the dead.

Literally.

“Okay!” you perk up and regret it instantly. Your stomach roils in protest and you almost puke again. The sunlight blots across your eyes. Cold sweat beads on your skin. “Time t-to… to go!”

“Hell yeah,” the trolls grumbles, wiping a streak of congealed blood off his cheek.

You grab the sleeve of his hoodie and tear down the street. “Follow me!”

You get one block, then two, and that’s when the adrenaline drains away completely, leaving you with a headful of fear, confusion and a world of pain.

Despite your goggles, the glare of the sun sears your vision in multicolored spots and streaks and you can smell the sharp tang of your own stale sweat and bile. Each time the soles of your ratty sneakers impact with the ground all the blood in your body strains outwards until your eyes cross with strain. You’re blind with it, unsure whether you’re genuinely running away or just careening towards a premature end.

At least your new buddy has got a tight hold of your hand.

That’s good. That’s very okay. You have no idea where you’re going because it feels like your skull is just slabs of bones grinding together, it hurts, you’re tired and you can’t quite remember where you were going again, or why.

“Can we— stop. I am—I’m gonna throw up,” you warn him.

“Absolutely not,” he hisses. “Fucking swallow that shit like a champ, alright? A-a-almost there, you can—can puke all you want then.” He’s wheezing with the effort of running, voice screwed tight and words clipping away with the exertion.

His claws prick the back of your hand as he hardens his grip and he’s definitely the one leading now. That’s fine, you doubt you could puzzle your way out of a phone booth right now. Black spots are creeping over your vision, but you fucking run because you remember not running would somehow be even worse.

You begin to flag, badly, and he has all reason to just leave you and save himself, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t. He drags you when you begin to stumble, shoves when your feet refuse to take another step.

“I did not risk my worthless fucking life for a worthless fucking alien just for you to croak five minutes later. You hear me, you ungrateful bilge sack? You are going to live and fucking worship my heroic self for saving you, alright? I’ll fucking kill you if you dare to die, don’t think I won’t.”

That’s funny for some reason, but your brain frizzles apart before you can muster a chuckle. Kind of hard to laugh anyway, you’re rounding a corner at a dead run and it’s only the tether of his hand which prevents you from plowing face-first into a wall. You skid across the dirty concrete, everything blurs, and find yourself in a grody back ally, complete with dumpsters and complementary rats the size of Chihuahuas.

Just like that, the troll stops. You careen right into him, nearly knocking the both of you over. He smells like burning metal and stale blood.

“Watch it—“ and then, “—oh shit, quick, quick, get up here.” He tugs at your wrist until a metal rung smacks against your palm. Your other hand finds a similar one right above it. A ladder. You blink at it. Everything is blurry, the glasses of your goggles are smudged with viscera. “ _Climb_ , goddammit!” he all but screams in your ear, crowding up against your back with urgent desperation.

You climb.

Your body is heavy and your head is loose on its neck, but you very carefully put one hand over the other, drag your feet up after you. Someone shoves your butt roughly, jostling you. You reel a little. “Faster!”

“I’m trying-“

“Your trying is inadequate and disappointing, if my ankles get gnawed on because you’re too busy staring at the cracks between the bricks I will eat you first when I rise, do you hear me?”

Another punch to your right buttock. You grunt, grip the metal rung hard enough the the knobs of bone in your hands ache with it, and pull yourself up.

It feels like a lifetime. Your exhales squeak and your body reeks with pure terror, there’s glimpses of dusty sunbaked brick wall, scummy metal. To your right windows yawn wide, jagged and broken edges of glass glittering in the sun. Occasionally shreds of curtains billow outwards in the feeble breeze.

“Stop here,” the troll says, oddly hushed and intense.

Don’t mind if I do, you think, and press your forehead against the next rung to try and anchor your head.

Next thing you know you have to flatten yourself against the ladder, because he’s spidering right over you like a cage of limbs and it’s a tight fit, the front of his body dragging against your back. He knees you in the ribs and steps on your toes.

Hot exhales waft against the back of your ear. “Don’t fall,” he snarls, and then he’s— going sideways?

You can feel the flex of muscle, the way he compacts himself and forces you into the ladder, before flinging himself at the faceless brick wall. Stone crumbles and  _he’s going to fall_  -you reach, almost scream, but then he doesn’t, somehow he’s clinging to the wall like a grayscale spiderman.

There’s a howl of wind, you watch his clothes lift away from his body, the sliver of monochrome skin at his waist. His fingers find clever handholds where the ancient mortar has worn away, helping him inch sideways until they can curl around the edge of a window. Is he going to— yes he is, he buoys his weight downwards and then all but rockets up, leaping through the window like a shadow, not even stirring the tattered curtain.

Gone.

You cling to the ladder and close your eyes, hating how you can hear the shuffle of thousand dead bodies down below, their eerie silence. No moaning like in the good old classics, just the sound of death beyond the grave: creaking tendons and wet flesh.

“Hey!”

You pry open an eye, wince. God the light hurts.

“Coast’s clear, come on.”

Come  _on_?  _Come_  on?!

He’s got to be joking. It’s not that you’re afraid of heights, but you’re seeing double and the window is more than an arm’s length away. You don’t have claws.

This high up the sunlight nearly catches him full in the face, hoodie or not, and he’s just as young and starved looking like you. He’s frowning, an expression fitted comfortably to the shape of his face, natural with those thick brows of his, but there’s worry there, too. For you, you realize.

“You can do it,” he says, leaning out of the window and reaching towards you. “You won’t fall, see, there’s a ledge there, right next to your foot. It’ll hold you, that’s it, now your hand…”

After how he all but bullied you to get this far, you’re surprised at the hoarse gentleness in his voice. He talks the entire time even though it seems to take ages, every movement a momentous effort and your balance is all messed up, any other time and you’d be more graceful at it than he was, but you can feel your consciousness slip through your fingers like sunlight on water.

“That’s it, you’re doing good, almost, just a little… a little… GOT YOU!” two hands wind into your shirt and haul, nearly stripping you out of it as he attempts to lift you by sheer determination, you kick at the wall with your feet to try and propel yourself up -he heaves, you scrabble, and both of you topple into the apartment block.

You hit the floor, the troll somewhere under you and cursing up a storm, you lie, dazed, nausea rising. You barely remember to roll off him before finally throwing up. Again. The bandana is sodden with it.

It’s barely anything, really, but your mouth twists with how sour it is.

You dry heave, gag, and lie down. Close your eyes.

Stupid, you think. Zombies will get you.

Too late.

*

You wake up to someone undressing you.

There’s hands (warm hands, alive hands) on your stomach, your ribs,  _under your shirt_ — you panic -flying into ferocious action and regretting it instantly, everything hurts, but you strike out regardless, screaming with outrage, there’s nowhere to go, you’re flat on your back and being held down and the world is wrong wrong wrong—

You scream for Jade. You scream for Rose. You scream for Dave. For your dad, for anyone. Nobody comes. And then you just scream.

Rose said so, Rose told you, that… that… people might…

“I’m not, I’m not, I’m sorry, STOP  _SCREAMING_ —“

Troll. The one who saved you.

Oh. No more hands. You wonder how long you were kicking and punching at air. Ooooouch your head, you curl into a ball to clutch at it, feeling sorry for yourself.

“What? Where…”

“Okay that was one of the more terrible decisions I’ve ever made, sorry, I shouldn’t have, I know I shouldn’t have, but you passed out and I was worried you might… were about to…. and I wanted to see if you were bitten so I could…” he stops to swallow, hands still in the air where you can see them.

So he could kill you before you killed him.

The tips of his fingers are shaking and his eyes are wide and glowing bright bright red.

“That’s alright,” you manage.

“I shouldn’t have touched you, I should-“

“No, it’s fine,” you lie, because you’re badly shaken, the helpless terror of being held down and strange hands on your body— oh god, you want your friends so badly you could howl with it.

“It’s not,” he says, throat working. “It’s fucking not, it really isn’t, and I’m still going to ask you to let me check you over, because they pulled you under for a long damn time before I could get to you. I can’t take the risk you’ll—“

“It’s fine.”

He shuts up, looking furious. With himself or you, hard to say.

You get it though. The risk is too great and you hurt so badly you can’t separate one pain from the other. If you did get bitten you will turn. You will turn and you will hurt him. Kill him. Eat him. Not necessarily in that order.

And hey, before trying to take off your clothes he removed your gross bandana and goggles, wiped your face. He saved you. You don’t want to kill him.

Welp, you take off your shirt. He has to help, you can’t even tell you’re tipping sideways until the floor is really close suddenly, huh, what about that. He has to help with your shoes and socks and jeans, too, you know you smell bad, it’s awful and humiliating and somehow totally worth it, because while you’re battered and bruised and covered in various offal and god knows what else, there’s somehow not a single bite mark on you.

“Oh, thank god,” you murmur, covering your face with your hands.

The troll doesn’t say anything, but a lot of tension has gone out of him, and after that the both of you are just too relieved to say much more.

There’s a damp rag for you, as well as a plastic bottle filled with water smelling rich with minerals -rainwater- so there’s no need for you to feel guilty about sluicing it down your body to try and cleaned up some. You feel so much better for it after, even though it’s hardly the same as a shower’d have been. You’re patting dry when he rejoins you with an armful of clothes.

“Thanks,” you croak, determined to dress yourself without help this time. You will conquer those socks, oh yes you will, those socks will be your bitches. One sock, then the other, even jeans, you’re on a roll here. The clothes are a size too small and yet somehow made for someone much taller than you. Not his then, he’s short.

Short and angry.

Everything about him is dark and compact and perpetually aggravated and there’s something off about him, you can’t put your finger on it, whether it’s the sheer inhuman presence of him, his attitude or how he’s a stranger, or perhaps even something else entirely. Not fair of you, either, because he saved you. He came and he saved you, when nobody else would have.

Battled a mob for you, this guy. Huh. That’s. Yeah, okay.

“Thanks for saving my ass out there,” you tell him and stick out your hand. “I’m John.”

He eyes your outstretched fingers and sort of slaps his palm against yours, not knocking it away really, but certainly not shaking either. “Karkat.”

The R rolls in the funniest way ever. Karrrrrrrrrk’t. You try it yourself.

“Your accent is terrible,” he says.

“Your face is terrible,” you shoot back, and that’s when you realize what’s wrong with him. Your mouth falls open. “Where’s your horns?”

 _The_  horns. In all their orange-yellow glory and the literal root of the shambling nightmares outside; he hasn’t got them.

“None of your business,” he bites back, sounding genuinely offended.

You can’t help wonder if he’s got sawed off stumps hidden under the hood of his sweater. This is one of those personal things you should leave alone though, you can tell. Man, Rose’d be so proud.

Rose.

 _Rose_  and  _Jade_  and  _Dave_.

“I need to go back out there,” you say.

“Wow, just when I though you couldn’t get anymore ridiculous.”

“My friends are out there!”

“Yeah, they might be,” Karkat concedes acidly. “As well as a whole horde of bonegnashers.”

…bonegnashers. Trolls. Pffff.

Karkat stares at you, considering, a little too serious for your liking. “Or they might be-“

“THEY’RE NOT DEAD!” it just explodes out of you, the biggest damn fear you can’t allow yourself to even think. “OKAY?! THEY’RE NOT—“

And then you stop, your own voice resonating through your sore skull until there’s black spots dancing before your eyes.

“Okay, they’re not dead, whatever you want, fuck, just stop screaming! God, the streets are flooded with the undead, it’ll be hours, maybe even days before they disperse enough for us to even contemplate getting out of here, your shrill shrieking is only attracting more of them!”

“They’re not dead,” you repeat, teeth gritted against the pain.

“Alright.”

He doesn’t believe it, it’s obvious. All he wants is for you be quiet and you allow yourself to hate him for that.

They’re not dead. They’re just… not.

You shake your head, denying the mere notion. They’re not dead. It’s just not possible. You pick at the hem of your borrowed shirt and keep your eyes wide so nothing incriminating can overflow. “That’s why I was out there all by myself. It was just a supply run, you know, so I went to draw them away so the others could get the stuff. But at the intersection I got…”

“Mobbed.”

“Yeah. They’re still out there, Karkat. They might be waiting for me and that would be so dangerous.”

“If they are that’d be really dumb.”

“I know that,” you mumble.

It is, he’s right. They should pack up and go, but they won’t, wouldn’t, not unless… you’re not sure (unless they think you dead).

(you kinda hope they’re waiting, despite the obvious danger)

(that’s awful)

(fuck)

“Besides,” Karkat says, “you’re in no state to be of any help to anyone. You’d just be a liability.”

“Gee thanks,” you grumble.

A sarcastic, “No problem,” and then: “Surely you’re better organised than that, dumbass, no way you’d have lasted this long otherwise. There must be a place where you rendezvous or something?”

Oh. Oh! Actually…

“Yeah! Rose’s mansion! That’s where we stay most of the time, I bet they went back.”

“Then that’s where you’ve got to go,” Karkat agrees, and, huh, hey. Is he… trying to make you feel better? Or is this just a lazy tactic to keep you calm and subdued? Does it matter?

Not really, you decide. Doesn’t matter nearly as much as how thirsty you are, or how sore, or how nauseous.

“Water?” you ask him. Hey, you can always try. If it stays down, good. If it doesn’t, it’ll at least ease the burn of the bile somewhat.

He gets up, groaning a little as he unfolds and wanders over to what seems to be some sort of dingy little kitchen. It’s pretty normal, as far as kitchens go, but there’s empty cans stacked along the countertop and the labels aren’t the sort you’d see at your regular 7-Eleven. And then you see the desk, as well as the gelatinous, withered husk of an alternian convertor slowly wasting away. Even as you look on, one of the fleshy tubes pulses feebly, spitting out a spark.

It clearly is an apartment accommodated for humans, but it was a troll who lived here.

You accept the water, but don’t drink. Just look up at him, right into his face, his lambent eyes.

“Is this your home?”

Karkat tips his head, jaw hard. “No.”

“Oh. Hideout?”

“No.”

“Ah.”

Silence. You’d push for more if your head didn’t hurt so much.

Karkat sits down, again with a pained groan. “A friend’s.”

“Is he-“

“Don’t know. Some of his shit is gone and there’s no—“

Blood. Signs of struggle. Bullet holes. Corpses. Leftovers.

Zombies.

“So he got out.”

“Maybe.”

You snerk out a laugh, kind of regret it. “Wow. You’re such a wet towel. Would it kill you to have some hope?”

There’s that sneering sideways look again, like you’re something slimy sticking to the bottom of his shoe. But then he says, “Maybe,” real slow, and he’s not smiling, you think his face might crack if he did, but yeah, you snicker and ouch, regret that, too.

Especially when the nausea rises in cold prickles towards your gorge.

And there goes the water. Damn it.

The back of your head hurts, just lingering over the area with your fingertips has you cold with sweat, but there’s no blood, not even a scratch. It’s so tender you almost suspect your finger might push right through, like a rotten patch on an apple.

Karkat watches you explore the back of your head with shaking fingers, brows pinched. “So how do we fix your head? Obviously it’s a lost case, but we can give it the old school try and stick a bandaid on it. Or just get rid of your head entirely, don’t make it’ll make much of a difference in your case. Quieter though. Why do you humans go splat so easy, fuck.”

“I don’t know, I’ve never been concussed before! I think you have to wake me up often or something, see if my pupils are wonky.”

“Helpful. How do we even know you’re not stealth dying or permanently damaged or something, cause I’m not eager to wake up with you chewing on my face.”

“We don’t.”

“Fantastic. So I poke you awake and then what?”

“I don’t know, see if I am acting weird or something?”

“You are weird. I do not know anything about you at all. The only thing I can reliably conclude is that you shriek like someone’s shoving a piano up your colon when you fight zombies.”

“I do not.”

“You so fucking do, you certified banana. No wonder you were mobbed.”

You want nothing more to say something really funny, something to put the jerk in his place, but the pain in your head is swelling and pounding like the beat of a war drum and you just want everything to stop happening so much for a while. “I don’t feel so good.”

“Don’t look so good either,” Karkat mutters, rather predictably. It’s scathing enough to be an insult, but his hands are gentle enough as he hoists you to your feet.

The touching thing is getting really too much, feels like you’ve hit some kind of tactile limit and you’re all but overloaded. Shaking him off would be so dumb, so you allow it.

He leads you to a second room at a drunken shuffle. There’s a bizarre, two-toned recuperacoon sitting against the wall and the whole place smells sickly sweet. Underfoot, the ground crunches. Bees.

Purple, dead bees.

They spread over the floor in a fuzzy blanket, all about the size of ping-pong balls and explode wetly when you step on them.

You’re going to be sick again.

*

The pile of clothes and soft objects has Karkat all weird, refusing to sleep anywhere near it. Fine. More space for you. Besides, you doubt he sleeps much at all.

The first time he wakes you all the bees are gone.

The second time he wakes you it’s dark and he’s reading by the light of some oddly phosphorescent fungi.

The third time you also got to pee. Not an especially pleasant experience, because toilets cannot be flushed anymore. So yeah. Urgh. But you don’t throw up. So many bonus points for you.

The fourth time the room is gray with the light of approaching dawn. Karkat is hunkering down next to you, frowning and very emphatically not touching the pile at all. “John.”

“Hrng.”

“I am going to take that means you didn’t die. Good job.”

“Thanks,” you groan.

He’s peering at your eyes, thoughtful, and you’re pretty sure even if there was something fucked up with them he wouldn’t really know how to tell. In return, you take a good close look at Karkat, drinking in details besides the first impression of ‘angry, short troll friend’.

He’s, well. Very troll, you suppose. That certainly is a thing he’s got working for him. Meaning that his face is remarkably human, but just alien enough to slightly freak you out. It’s mostly the area around the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones, as well as the angle of his nostrils. His unhappy mouth is a dull black with teeny tiny fangs jutting past his lower lip. You note how he breathes in, but doesn’t breathe out.

Aliens man.

So weird.

He’s probably thinking the same thing.

The light refracts oddly in his eyes, like there’s a reflective disc of iridescent green behind the retina. His eyelashes are outrageously long and he doesn’t seem to blink nearly as much as you do.

Still hasn’t deigned to lower the hood of his sweater either. The little you can see is just a mass of thick, black hair. No horns. This is going to some big, dark secret, you can tell, something to do with a tragic past and noble sacrifices. Like in the movies.

“I’m almost afraid to ask, but what are you thinking?” Karkat asks.

“Have you seen Con Air?”

He blinks.

“It’s a movie.”

He all but jumps to his feet. “Oh look, a conversation I don’t want to have. Breakfast it is!”

You follow suit, decidedly more wobbly and yeah, okay, your head still aches but not like it’s going to cave in any time soon. Progress! Sheets have been pinned over the windows, the cool darkness bearable to your overly sensitive eyes. You’re not sure whether it’s for your benefit or because trolls are primarily nocturnal.

“C’mon,” you bleat at his retreating back, “you guys watch movies, right?”

“Movies are an Earth human thing too sophisticated for me to comprehend, oh transcended one, we mere trolls only abduct the occasional sheep and replace its brain with a potato in name of troll science,” he tells you while he disappears head first in a kitchen cabinet.

“Is that actually a thing? Abducting sheep or cows?”

“Do I like a scientist to you? I’ve been here since I was six, alright, so keep your xenophobic tropes to yourself.”

Whaaaaaat.

Wow, never mind.

You join Karkat where he’s opening a can with his claws, all nice and sanitary. Inside is something brown, floating in congealed gravy. If it looks like cat food and smells like cat food… you peer at the label.

Applaws Chicken Deluxe.

It’s cat food.

You tell him as much. Karkat peers at the can in mock shock, slapping a hand against his cheek. “Wow golly gee and fuck darnit, whadya know.”

“Dude, gross.”

“I cry each time I remember how much resources your kind wasted on your lap parasites.”

“Pets.”

“These are all the fucks I give,” Karkat mutters around a mouthful, waving expansively at the empty room.

“You guys have pets. The big white ones.”

Gulp. Ooooh, eeeeew. Oh, nasty, he swallowed actual cat food. You mime gagging.

Karkat is very much not impressed. “Lusii, you ignorant shitstain. So not the same.”

“Whatever man.”

“Whatever yourself. Here,” he pushes a can at you and you take it with a scrunched up nose, fearing the worst.

It’s chilli. Oh.

You open your mouth to thank him.

“Don’t want to hear it,” he interjects, but pokes open your can with a single showy twist of his claw.

*

That night, they get into the building. You and Karkat barricade the door and don’t sleep.

*

Three days.

Three days of quiet murmurs. Three days of chilli and cat food. Three days of nausea, rising and abating.

You don’t die. You don’t turn. Slowly, it gets better.

As the fourth day rises gray and damp, Karkat slowly closes the kitchen cupboard. “We’re out of food,” he says.

This, when you were already hungry. You tip your head back against the wall. Still smarts a bit, like a nice juicy bruise, but that tender, fleshy sensation has gone. “Well. That sucks,” you say. Or whisper, rather, you can feel your vocal cords waste away for lack of use.

“Hm,” Karkat stalks over to the window, slow and deliberate. Flattens himself against the wall before twitching the curtain aside to peek outside. “Might as well go.”

It’s not a choice. Well it is, if the other option is slowly starving. You’re sure that would all be very tragic and poignant and whatever, but you’ve made a pact with your friends that you’d all live to see your eighteenth birthday. Almost there. Would be a shame for all that  _stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive_ to go to waste.

Karkat carefully backs away, settling the curtain back in place. Reaches into a pocket. “Here. It’s the last one.”

A can of chilli.

You smile. “We can share,” you say, reaching out to take it from him.

You drop the can.

Because you misjudged the distance, its weight, its shape—because your fingers are weak and shaking, because you weren’t fast enough… you’re not sure. It’s an accident.

But the can drops with this unholy, loud  _POK!_  that resonates with the hollow wooden floor.

Both of you stare at it in horror. You, wide-eyed with a hand before your mouth, Karkat with his fangs bared. One second, then two, five and ten —twenty, both of you exhale, cold with the sudden sweat of fear.

Karkat turns to snarl at you —sound. Not him, not you.

Footfalls vibrate through the woodwork, fast and concise, not a drunken gallop. Was someone else hiding in the building with you all this time? Someone who’s glad there might be other survivors? Or someone who isn’t, is running to come and-

A hand grabs the shoulder of your hoodie. “John… John  _run_.”

You’re thrown at the window and your hips bang into the windowsill painfully at the same something else bangs loudly into the front door. Your head snaps around. Karkat’s fingers clench on your body. “No,” he says. Pleads.

Something throws itself against the door. It’s not blind instinct. It is purposeful. The lintel creaks and plaster hisses out of the cracks.

You swing a leg through the window. Karkat doesn’t let go and his breath is hot on your neck when he begs you to “John, fuck, John  _faster_. Go, go—”

You’re through it and trying to judge the distance to the ladder when there’s the unholy grinding sound of the stone and mortar and wood coming apart. Karkat cries out in real fear, so you jump—

All your organs hit the back of your throat as you drop—arms clawing for purchase—metal, stone scraping your nails— you hang, suspended, somehow not letting go -it’s a wild sort of sensation, that ugly, raw strength of desperately not trying to die. Karkat nearly knocks you clear off even as he lands above you, badly, skipping two rungs in an uncontrolled descend.

You yowl in pain when his sneaker kicks you in the ear, impersonal, noise because it hurts, and then Karkat gets a good grip and begins climbing so you do, too, following —something  _howls_  at you, something hanging out of the window to your left and scrabbling at the rocks, gouging, finding purchase—

Around you there’s only your shrieking breaths and the sun’s brilliance growing whiter while rusted rungs of metal snatch past your nose as you climb -Karkat is disappearing over an edge, because he is faster, because he is less hurt, because he’s scared, gone.

Back again, an dark outline haloed by the sun as he reaches for you. Your hand finds his, he pulls, you hurt and grit your teeth and climb, something behind you, snarling spitting gurgling,  _whining_ , the iron rungs tremble in your palm as it comes after you.

So fast.

The roof is baking in the low sun and the wind stings you as you run, crossing the roof. Karkat is lagging, limping and winded, so you sink your fingertips between the tender latticework of his finger bones and pull, pull, pull, pull him over the edge and into oblivion as you throw yourself into the air, feet kicking at nothing -you’ll make it, the other building is lower.

You land hard, all air punched out of your lungs as gravel smacks against the soles of your feet. Karkat’s leg folds under him and he rolls, crying in agony.

Almost immediately after something else hits the gravel roof.

It’s smaller than you expected.

A boy.

A troll.

Palming the crushed stone as he crawls on all fours -he must be dead, must be, when nothing has ever looked more alive and furious with it.

No weapon. You kick him, then shove him -away from Karkat, a folded heap on the ground, unconscious, maybe -if you’re lucky and you didn’t kill him, broke the bones in his body by pulling him into the air with you.

There’s no wild growth of candycorn cartilage, just a skinny alien kid slavering on himself, hungry. Always hungry now. Tiny dual horns and milky red-and-blue eyes, so thin, almost fragile -he seethes at you and just —you try, you do, push at him with both hands and both feet as he knocks you over and screams at you. The strength is inhuman and there’s nobody holding the reins.

He looks whole. Healthy. You’re taken aback by how handsome he is, was, could be, in that brief brilliant moment where you’re not dead yet and he opens his mouth over unprotected face. Narrow face, hollow cheeks, straight black hair. Unbelievably long lashes and a perfect, straight nose. The fangs are white, sharp, remarkably clean.

The air breaks with a crack of noise. The troll’s head explodes.

A welter of bones and blood and brains sprays the gray pebbled roof. Your shirt, your right leg. You lie there, air seething through your mouth and into your lungs, even as Karkat’s looms over you. He’s holding a gun.

Slowly, reluctantly, the body slumps unto you.

More blood leaks out of the shattered welter that used to be the troll’s head. It’s cold as it trickles past your throat. Not quite liquid.

It takes a while before you’re ready to move. You hurt all over and the troll boy is leaking more than just blood on you. Mostly headless, not heavy at all, just rolls off you when you sit up. Your whole chest is tacky with viscera, but moving, pumping oxygen through you. The sun is angry and muted in the sky as you push free of the corpse.

Karkat laughs -you flinch- and keeps laughing, full-chested and real until he’s crying, folding through his knees and setting hands to the dead troll on the roof.

“Sollux,” Karkat says.

The gun lies forgotten on the gravel. You pick it up. Karkat curls over the ruined remains of the other troll’s face.

It’s how he knew where to go, where to keep you safe when you were hurt. His friend. Sollux.

Karkat knew, you’re pretty sure. The apartment had been empty too long -dead bees, everywhere, soft and crunching underfoot. Having to shoot Sollux is something else entirely than knowing that probably, maybe, his friend was out there, hunting.

Daywalkers are different from human zombies -those are just dead, shambling around and yearning. Easy, not too scary when encountered alone. Slow. Stupid. Dead. Transformed into yellowed ruins of osseous matter as it flourishes past skin and tendon, often too crippled to be harmful.

Daywalkers are -used to be- trolls. You’re still not sure how dead they are. But they’re  _fast_ , whole unless otherwise damaged. Worse than trolls, somehow.

Karkat is crying. In long, keening sobs. Sollux lies flung out like a murmured thing on the roof. The clothes are not quite filthy, almost clean.

Too late. Both you. He probably died around the time Karkat was saving you.

Karkat touches the frayed edge of Sollux’ jaw.

He’s so small when he asks: “Are we still friends?” But Sollux is a dead thing on the roof, all the soft, tender red-purple things that used to be him leaking into the fine gavel. There’s no answer besides rolling thunder in the distance.

What if it was Rose? Dave? Jade?

Jade. Oh Jade. She was -is!  _is_ \- good with guns. She taught you, a little. Still feels awkward, but you settle down at a respectful distance, and let Karkat mourn.

Your finger never leaves the trigger.

*

The diseased looking yellow of Sollux’ blood has mostly dried when you get up to get Karkat, who’s stopped crying a while ago. The sun is setting, and Karkat’s kneeling next to his friend with the tender hollows of his palms up, like he’s asking for something.

The air feels steamy and wet, crackling. You can smell how dead Sollux is. Has been. Was.

“Karkat. We gotta go,” you say.

“Alright,” he answers. He sounds so normal.

*

It’s raining by the time you find a safe place to spend the night.

Hah. Safe.

Twenty, maybe half an hour from where Rose lives. So close, really. Karkat is empty, spent, and your head feels like a cracked egg… yeah, no. The bit through the park is always tricky, you’ve got to be alert. If Hal is active he’ll help, but you have no way of knowing if he is, whether Dave still has that luxury —and Karkat is only moving because you make him.

You can see the park, the trees, even a flicker of the lake, through the upper window. The house is hidden, no smoke, nothing, which is a good, you tell yourself. Birds sing.

Tomorrow you’ll be home. Your friends’ll be there, of course they will be, worried and waiting for you. You’ve got so many cool and dangerous things to tell them, and Karkat -they’ll like him, maybe after some convincing, but they will. He saved you. Two, three, four times? You lost count.

You like him. He almost died for you. Did his best to put you back together, after. It’s harder than it looks and not easy to do the same.

Karkat doesn’t want to be touched.

Now, you want to be, so badly. He is alive. You are alive. You just want to be sure.

Push. Pull.

You wreck the bedroom of a beautiful apartment, stripping the bed, barricading the door, marking escape routes, dead ends, blind spots. Karkat sits on the floor, blank-faced. He’s shaking faintly.

Then and only then do you realise he’s never had to kill anybody he knew before. Somehow it makes him even more precious, rare, more real and alive than yourself -after all, you killed the nice old lady next door, your classmate’s little sister, your dad and that crying lady with her baby last month. He’s not been on the streets very long. Can’t have been, if he’s crying like this, if he’s still willing to rescue strangers.

You undress him like he undressed you, that first night, and he allows you.

Karkat’s body is strange. Unlike and alike your own, more muscle, more jutting bones, waist unnaturally narrow and shoulders harsh, too cruel somehow. There’s odd jutting slabs over his sides, like the skin wore away over a set of ribs, and he has no navel.

His skin is scarred, over and over and everywhere, neat perfect slashes at rhythmic intervals, but unbroken and very soft under your palms. He shivers when you nudge him unto the balcony and into the rain.

No soap, nothing, you swipe at your body with your hands to get the yellow sludge off. Karkat rubs at his arms, vague and distracted, until you come over and help him.

He’s shorter than you, more compact and muscled. When the rain flatters his wild hair, you see his horns. Not sawed off, or missing, or anything else dramatic. Nothing cool and symbolic like in some alternian movies you’ve seen. They’re just very small, soft and rounded. Velvety.

“I’ve know Sollux since we were grubs,” Karkat tells you. “We came here on the same ship.”

You can’t say you’re sorry, Karkat will kill you. You scrub at his arms and try to sound like your usual self. “Was he waiting for you to come back?”

Karkat nudges you and you obligingly step back. He wipes a hand across his mouth. “Probably not.”

You’re pretty sure Sollux was where Karkat was going. Found you instead, didn’t he. Maybe he’s sorry. You’re not.

“We’ll go to Rose’s tomorrow,” you tell him. “When it’s stopped raining.”

“You’ve engineered a brilliant plan,” Karkat mutters. “Vague and formless, just the way I like my disasters.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“HAH. Fuck no. Let’s stroll through the park tomorrow, why not. Maybe your friends didn’t die waiting for you after all.”

It’s mean and it hurts, and it’s very tempting to open your mouth and put him in his place. Karkat’s whole angry me-against-the-world schtick is kind of cute and a lot funny, the sort where it’s fun to prod at the embers until they spark and blaze, then stand back and feel his fury fizzle on your skin.

Only you’re still wiping Sollux’ blood of your chest, so it’s kind of true right now, Karkat-against-the-world.

Karkat doesn’t say sorry. You don’t either.

Both of you are hungry and thirsty and tired, and the only problem you can solve is with sleeping. This time he doesn’t say anything about the nest of blankets, just lies down in them, facing away. You’re pretty sure he isn’t sleeping.

 

That’s okay. You sit down at his back and keep watch.


End file.
